Gilliam and Grisoni Grab Good Omens for a Groat

We've said no to lots of people who want to make it into a cool, big commercial film...

The ever wonderful BoingBoing is reporting on an RU Sirius interview with Neil Gaiman earlier this week where the author of Mirrormask and the forthcoming Matthew Vaughan helmed Stardust, talked about long discussed plans for Terry Gilliam to direct his novel Good Omens. Like Lars von Trier's next project, Good Omens - which Gaiman co-wrote with Terry Pratchet -  concerns the antichrist.

In the interview Gaiman revealed that he had set the price of an option at one Groat.

RU SIRIUS: You're doing something with Terry Gilliam, who is absolutely one of my favorite directors.

NEIL GAIMAN: Terry has been working for many years on Good Omens, which is the novel that Terry Pratchett and I co-wrote about the end of the world…

Terry Gilliam has loved the book for years. He has been working on it for awhile. He recently came to us and said, "OK. I'm going to get the rights back to the script that I wrote with this guy called Tony Grisoni a few years ago. What is it going to cost me to get the option for myself?" Terry and I put our heads together and thought, well, we really want Terry Gilliam to make it -- we want this to be a Terry Gilliam film. We've said no to lots of people who want to make it into a cool, big commercial film... We decided that it should cost him a groat. And I don't believe they've actually made groats, which is an old English coin worth about fourpence, since about the 1780s. Which means he is going to have to go to EBay.

RU: He's going to have to do some searching… a magical quest.

GAIMAN: I mean frankly they're really cheap. We figured out we were going to need Farthings to pay the agent commission on a groat. I went to EBay and picked up a farthing for practically nothing.